A Gift From Somewhere: translating a short story written in a "new English"

Abstract

Ghanaian author Ama Ata Aidoo is particularly renowned in her native country for being one of the first writers to draw international attention thanks to her composite body of work (prose, drama, poetry) in English; her writings vividly represents the day to day struggles of a country and its citizens (particularly women) facing an ever more globalised world, all of this in a language which is not her native one. Despite the remarkable variety of indigenous languages, Ghana has chosen to maintain English as its official language after independence, using it both in formal contexts (such as law and education) and as an everyday means of communication. Records show that English has undergone a number of adaptations to express local culture-bound meanings and yet scholars have long debated on whether or not to consider Ghanaian English (GhE) a proper variety of English, still failing to find a definitive agreement. This work will take one of Ama Ata Aidoo’s short stories, A Gift from Somewhere, as a specimen of GhE writings and will offer an Italian translation of it, analysing the most common GhE linguistic innovations and evaluating the challenges new Englishes pose to translators towards other target languages (e.g. Italian). In doing so, this dissertation aims to participate in the broader discussion about the ways, reasons and goals of translating new Englishes writings.